The Moving Mountains Project story

Student at Himanchal School Nangi Village

When the same thing happens to you twice in life, it's sometimes something worth listening to.

Peru. A remote valley in the Cordillera Huayhuash, and I'm talking with the guide and friend walking with me through these astounding mountainscapes. "You should bring some walkers to us here. Let us show them this place. Let them see how we live here. Share our mountains, our culture."

Nepal. Nangi Village, Annapurna region. This time it's the village elder speaking. "Just spend time here. Go for a walk. Look around. Maybe you'll see something you can do."

Two seeds were planted in two far-flung countries. I took those seeds away with me from the mountains and, over time, cultivated them into something that fulfilled both of those invitations. I had been in remote mountain regions before in some of the poorest countries in the world and I could see that the struggles people faced there were the same. Mountain life has always been tough, and mountain dwellers are ruggedly self-sufficient, but in the 21st century, life is changing rapidly even here. People need to participate in a money economy, and above all they want their children to be educated. Many villages had started their own development initiatives but they lacked funds to be taken as far as they needed to go. Mountain people, I discovered, were not after handouts but rather partnerships to manage change and development they best way they could. Like many who visit, I wanted to find some way to be able to build those partnerships, and give back to communities who had shared their mountains with me. After that second invitation I went home to think just how I could do that.

Those two little seeds had landed in fertile ground. Since well before my time at Durham (Hild & Bede, 1995-1999), I had been into the outdoors: I'd grown up in South Africa and hiked the bush there often. Next, I'd lived in Scotland where I roamed a new kind of mountain landscape. At Durham I had been in the Mountaineering Club and joined walking and climbing trips. I'd studied languages - Russian, German and Spanish - and my third year overseas had taken me to Siberia where I fell in with an outdoor crowd with whom I climbed, rafted, cross country skied, and undertook ambitious multi-week hikes in summer. After university my heart had taken me to Australia's island state, Tasmania, where I discovered an outdoors perfect for biking, hiking and sea kayaking and trail running.

Work meantime, had become my writing. I'd written since I could remember and while completing my Masters in Political Science at Melbourne University, I began to publish my stories in national newspapers and magazines. Masters done, this career in freelance journalism went from strength to strength. Editors like word-and-picture packages, so I developed the photography that I'd always combined with my love of the outdoors. I realised I could travel and have outdoor adventures, interview interesting people, find untold stories to feature and make an interesting and independent living. So based in Tasmania, I ranged Russia, South America, Arctic Canada, and the Himalayas. As I got to know these regions well, with the help of the languages that I'd studied at Durham, guide book contracts for well known publishers like Insight Guides and Lonely Planet followed. I always found time to explore mountains between my travel for work - and it was on these journeys that those two seeds were planted. They are now growing vigorously.

The Moving Mountains Project was the name that came to me on an icy morning run on Mount Wellington in mid-winter Tasmania. I'd set the project up to do just what my Peruvian and Nepali friends suggested. We'd take small groups on walking journeys through remote mountain regions in Peru and Nepal, we'd do village homestays and experience the culture far more deeply than most tourists, and we'd go walking not just for our own benefit. With careful management, we could offer not only unforgettable trekking trips, but provide significant financial support for villagers' own development projects in the areas we visited. The Moving Mountains Project could be a win/win setup for everyone involved. And it was going to be fun!

And now I write this from Nepal. It's the eve of the trekking season here - the last of the monsoon rains that poured and thundered last night in Kathmandu are absent from the clear skies of lakeside Pokhara. As I write this, I can glimpse the razor-edged, snow shrouded peak of Machapuchare, hanging above the jungle green down here in the valley. I'm here to set up this season's Nepal's walks, and in less than three weeks our hikers arrive - excited about their off-the-beaten track walking adventure but also excited that their walking here will make a positive difference in mountain people's lives.

Vocational Training at Himanchal High School

What people experience on both The Moving Mountains Project walks is more than a hike - it's a course in full mountain immersion. We stay in villages, in villagers' homes where possible - we eat with them and we laugh with them. We stay over in villages instead of simply passing through, so there's a chance to interact and make real connections with real people. The people who guide us on the ground are also born and bred in the areas we visit: the best authorities to show us the areas they know and love.

In Nepal we are fortunate to work with an active village development committee whose long term project - amongst many other already successful projects in an area covering 13 villages is to build a further education college so that students who complete the school they have now developed can complete their education by getting vocational skills and even computer training. Funds from The Moving Mountains Project will substantially contribute to this and other projects in Nepal in the coming years. In Peru, we have close connections in the poor mountain villages surrounding the Cordillera Huayhuash. Here funds from our walks cater for more basic needs: books in one school, a photocopier in another, and in the long term, establishing computer labs in the schools. With two or three trips a year, we hope to be a long term background source of funding for young people's education on both these remote mountain regions.

So tomorrow it's off to the villages. Backpack packed and a steep all-day climb with huge views of snow shrouded Annapurna as a reward. There will be friends to greet in the villages and many Namastes to say.

From a seed of an idea this project has grown enough to start to move mountains.

In 2009, the Moving Mountains Project is walking in Nepal in March and April and in Peru in July and August.

▸ Visit the Moving Mountains Project website

Gabi Mocatta was at the College of St Hild & St Bede, 1995–1999, where she studied Modern European Languages.